Which power management software utility do you use?

Just curious to see which program(s) many of you use... I think I included the most popular ones.

I only use Power4Gear.

 

yeah, power4gear for me too... I tried the RMclock the other night but it kept crashing as soon as i went from AC adapter to battery, so I gave up on that....


insane

 

Rightmark CPU V1.7 for undervolting, SpeedSwitch XP for the CPU speed switching and Power4Gear doing whatever it does (the useful bit for me is reducing the display brightness when running on battery). These three co-exist without creating obvious problems.

John

 

Tried CHC, but to be honest didnt really notice any significant advantages over P4G, so I stick with that, kinda like the ease of just hitting a button, is it the best power manager? probably not but it works reasonably well and I cant be bothered installing and managing 3 more programs.
a

 

CHC allows you to undervolt the CPU which is usefull for longer batterylife.

 

CHC/NHC ftw!

 

I tried to have RMClock and Power4Gear co-exist so that I could have the benefits of undervolting, yet still use the P4G hotkey...however, every time I pressed the hot key to switch profiles, RMClock would default back to my stock voltages...
So I just stick with Power4Gear now.

 

When I upgraded from RMclock 1.7 to 1.8 I noticed that the settings were sometimes lost. I didn't make the connection to P4G profiles. I just reverted to 1.7 which has been very stable. Send me a message if you want this version - it's not listed for download at rightmark.org.

John

 

RHC and P4G FTW

Hi pyro!

 

RHC...

 

Erh, NHC

I was reading about the Rhinocerous Political Party of Canada

 

I have a little question for those of you that have been messing with the power management apps for a while.... I was using Power4Gear for the first week I had this laptop, until I noticed that Windows XP reports the system speed at 395 MHZ when I have it on Max Batt mode. I read some specs about the Speed Stepping mode of the Pentium M and saw that when running at degrade mode, it starts at the bottom step, 800MHZ, and then starts to slow down the lower the battery life.

My question is: is the Power4Gear app somehow forcing the CPU to run at the maximum degraded mode? Because of this suspicion, I've been using Windows' management settings for Max Batt mode, which reports 795 MHZ under the system settings window.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Paul

 

As far as I know, the CPU cannot run below 800 MHz...so if Windows is showing you "395 MHz" in the display properties, it's wrong. Rest assured it's running at 800 MHz.

 

Well, I tried RMClock version 1.7... and still, each time I pressed the Power4Gear hotkey, my undervolting settings would be lost and the default voltages would be used

Oh well...it's not like this computer runs unbearably hot.

 

I have seen reports from time to time which suggest that P4G may slow down the system clock to save power, although I have seen no firm evidence of this happening on my W3A (SpeedSwitchXP reports that sometimes drop to around 700MHz - this might be a matter of measurement). Many desktop motherboards support overclocking by changing the system clock, so underclocking must be easy to implement. There will be some additional power saving because the memory runs slower as well as the CPU.

John

 

Power4Gear throttles the processor down to 400 Mhz when on max battery. RMClock can do that, too (at whatever frequency you'd like). I'm using NHC because it provides more information than the other programs, while still accomplishing most of the same functionality.

 

400-500 is where mines stays when on battery.

I've seen weird numbers though, 782mhz, 778 mhz, 803mhz, etc.

 

Really? I could've sworn that the CPU didn't throttle any lower than 800 MHz... I, too, have seen those numbers before, but when using CPU-Z, it showed 800 MHz to me.

I'll try looking again the next time i'm on batteries.

 

You guys use p4g with nhc? Which version of nhc? or are you using chc?

Also what's the advantage of p4g when nhc does everything that p4g does???

Curious,
Mike

 

The CPU won't speed step below a 6x multiplier (800 mhz), however, RMClock and Power4Gear both take the processor at the 6x multiplier and throttle it, so it's running slower than it would normally. That's how you get the lower numbers.

 

Personally, I like P4G's profiles... at the control of a button. Without P4G, the button does nothing...

 

Power4Gear works fine for me.

 

I use P4G just because it is there, but I also use Mobilmeter to measure system stats, what I find really cool is that it displays discharge rate, which is the only way to tell you what your actual power saving is.

want to know is how low can you get your power discharge rate? I had mine down to 18 watts when I had a fresh install and screen set to one notch off darkest setting (which is stil quite workable).

Now with all software laoded it sits around 20 watts

Also how far can you underclock the GPU? Ati tool powerplay drops the core to 324 and memory to 135, any one played with getting a lower stable setting than this?

 

On my W7J, battery drain ranges from 14W to 16W on second to lowest lcd brightness, fixed at 1ghz. Oh, I also did not install the TPM module drivers and I also disabled the camera because it was getting warm near there. Now I don't feel anything so that's good the power ist' wasted.

 

I use NHC to monitor my temps and battery, but I use RMClock to undervolt because NHC isn't able to undervolt my CPU.

 

rmclock 2.1 here

 

RMClock 2.1 for clock & voltage mgmt (+ some batt monitoring)
MobileMeter for temp & batt monitoring

 

I've had some experience with undervolting the old Pentium M processors down th 0.700V. If I undervolted a core duo processor, will there be any significant battery or heat decrease? Or is it still rather paltry like always? (I think I read somewhere that the CPU only takes up 10% of the battery juice)

 

most of the power comes from the screen, the good thing I like about mobilmeter is that it tells you the current discharge rate when running on battery, so as you change settings you can see how that impacts on battery life, the min discharge rate I have gotten down to is 18.5 watts......

 

NHC. I undervolt my Core Duo and during max multiplier (x11) it has only 1V, full stable. Besides there's an option called modulation clock (I set it to 25%) so now it has 250MHz(idle) to 460MHz(stress). It works fine, nothing to complain about.

 

sorry didnt have a good read through this thread, but there is a new version of NHC out. Just in case someone didnt realise.


Insane

 

@NZwaverider:

Could you do me and us (forum) a small favour.

1) Open mobile meter and take a screenshot of you using a discharge rate of 18.5. (this is measured in watts) Also tell us exactly was your settings are to achieve your discharge rate.

2) Take out the main battery, and look at the writing, take the Volts and AMPs. Here's an exmaple. 12.5v (5200mamps/1000) = 5.2amps = 12.5v x 5.2a = 65 watts.

3) Cross check your battery miser by checking the discharge rate and divide it by your total Watts of the battery = your battery life. Does this equal your battery miser? If it does, then you know this is another way to accurately tell ur battery life.

4) Cross check with another program in windows. go to control panel, administrative tools, then double click on Performance. Then right click on the graph and add a new variable, this one being Discharge rate, and find out what number it gives. Compare that discharge rate with the mobile meter discharge rate.

Also take a screen shot of that.

Then report back to us about ur findings plz. LOL i would do this myself, but as many here know, i don't have a laptop and looking heavily into the V1J which has a 77whr battery, and if my discharge rate was 18.5/77 = 4 hours!!!

That would be crazy!

Thanks in advance, plus this will also help others in knowing what else is going on in their laptops.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

Ok MysticGolem, thats quilte a task list, I just got home from work, so will have to do this over the next few days, but for now here is a screen print with all my settings + BT off & Wifi OFF, I have actually seen it go onto the 16's but honestly it averages out at around 18.5 its amazing with my BT running it goes up to 22-23w

"battery miser" I have not heard of that term before, there is a battery progarm called battery miser did you mean this?

more to come later.......

 

Ok great! Thanks NZwaverider.

According to the W3J spec sheet the battery is 71whr, and if you consume on average 19whr then you should get 71/19 = ~3.7 hours and many here get 3.5 hours which it nice.

NZ if you could take out Main battery and tell me the amps and volts.

Now looking at the modular bay battery.
It is 11.1v and 3.6amps: 11.1v x 3.6a = 40whr

So if everything hold true, if your consuming 19whr on average and your on the modular bay battery you can get 40whr/19whr = ~2 hours, most likely more around 1.5 hours depending on how low you can get ur discharge rate.

NZ does this seem right? Do you have a modular bay battery?

Also just a little FYI for all of you, the Battery Miser is the battery image in your system tray. According to your screenshot NZ, you see the Time at the buttom right corner, to the left of that there's a battery in blue. <- That's ur battery miser.

1) If you take your Mouse and leave it on top of the battery miser, it will say your percentage of how full the battery is, and it will also give you an estimated batterylife left.

example, "95%, Estimated 3:15"

2) If you place your mouse over the battery miser and it does not show the info above mentioned then do this.

3) Take your mouse and right click on the battery miser, then click on ur desktop, then take your mouse and hover it on top of ur miser and it should show u the info. Repeat and rinse this process each time you want to see that info.

4) For those who want to be a bit more technical use a 3rd party program to monitor everything, including temps, % of battery, and uptime and estimated batterylife...etc etc..Of course you need to find a program to do all that.

Thanks for the info NZ!

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

On my x IBM T41 P-M 1.6 I could go down to ~10watts which is just truely remarkable and that was without any undervolting.

 

Where can I get this Power4gear software?

 

its comes with the driver/utility cd when you buy asus computers

 

What do you advise me to use as P4G dont work on Vista

thanks

 

Mines on the default Windows Power Management. But they don't turn off the Aero feature when switched to power saver mode. i'm going to try power4gear and see if it helps.

 

@NZwaverider


From what I've noticed with my Go7600 is that no matter how low i set the core and memory i got mine down to core : 75Mhz, mem :75Mhz and it doesnt do much really.

Before this notebook i had basically the same notebook just with a Go6100 and I could get it to only pull around 12 watts. With this Go7600 its always around 19-23

So I dont think the screen does that much from what I've tested (screen totally off vs totally on.) maybe 4 or 5 watts when on at the brightest level.

Insane

 

Gidday NZ.

I am impressed with the little performance graphs, how do you get that to display, is it an ASUS tool or somethoing from ATI? I would be really keen to see what my W3J is drawing

Thanks mate

 

I use power4gear and nhc at the same time.

I need nhc to tell me the battery wear. Otherwise I like power4gear the best of any Ive ever used. It is the most stable and not only adjust brightness but has contrast and color settings for the different brightness, which as far as I know is unique.

 

Ah, found it, downloaded it, ran it. (sounds like a country and western song) MobileMeter, what a great little app! Just playing music via WMP, I am getting about 22W draw.

Thanks guys

 

I used to use NHC because I liked being able to see the CPU temp in the system tray, but now that RMClock has it I use that exclusively. It's light and does exactly what I want it to do.